


i just need one good one to stay

by jessicamiriamdrew



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 22:02:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11700750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/pseuds/jessicamiriamdrew
Summary: all the quick lil Spones ficlets from tumblr





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> what do plomeek flowers look like? i don't know. i was picturing something vaguely thistle like, but it doesn't matter.
> 
> based loosely off this prompt: http://awful-aus.tumblr.com/post/116941769918/awful-au-196

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do plomeek flowers look like? i don't know. i was picturing something vaguely thistle like, but it doesn't matter.
> 
> based loosely off this prompt: http://awful-aus.tumblr.com/post/116941769918/awful-au-196

“Hey, hey, you!”

Spock freezes, hand clutched around a plomeek flower. He’s already pocketed a stone from one of the other houses he passed by.

“This is my garden, you see the sign—Dr. Leonard McCoy—that means it belongs to me.”

There is indeed a sign, one that Spock has glanced at many times, because this private practice office has the best plomeek flowers in the neighborhood.

“You can’t just steal flowers from my garden!” Leonard says.

Spock stiffens, because technically this flower is outside of this man’s fence and on the public property line, but he stops himself.

Because he tears his gaze from the flower and discovers the man he’s been stealing flowers from is handsome.

“Well, is she pretty?” Leonard asks.

“I’m sorry?” Spock says, because he hasn’t quite recovered.

The man gestures at the flower. “The girl you’ve been stealing my flowers for.”

Spock considers the question, rolls it around in his head. His mother was beautiful, but even being half Vulcan he’s aware that’s not the intent of the question.

“Yes,” he says after what is probably an awkward length of time. “Very much so.”

“Well, I’d like to meet her, and give her a piece of my mind. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Spock,” he says automatically, years of being a professor making that a question he’s trained to answer.

Spock doesn’t know how to explain that he’s on his way to the cemetery, that he tries to visit his mother’s grave several times a month. He likes to sit and talk with her, even though he’s aware that she’s not there to answer.

“Very well,” he says. “It is the only fair option that you accompany me, given that I have been taking flowers from your garden.”

He thinks that Leonard must have been expecting an argument because there’s no quick response.

“It better not be too far,” Leonard grumbles.

It’s very tempting to remind Leonard that he’s the one who invited himself but—something about this interaction is so refreshing. He thinks, had his mother still been alive, that she would be enjoying this moment very much.

“It’s about a ten minute walk,” Spock says. He hesitates, not sure if this counts as a compliment. “If it is any consolation, I take flowers from your garden because they are both of Vulcan and beautifully grown.”

Usually, he thinks the walk is the perfect amount of time. It’s far enough from his home that he has options for picking flowers or pocketing stones, but he’s loath for this interaction to end. Leonard is amusing underneath his immense personality.

Spock very much likes him.

Leonard’s story trails off as it becomes clear that they are stopped in front of a cemetery.

“This way,” Spock says, following the path to his mother’s grave that has become so familiar.

He stops in front of her grave and Leonard stands exactly next to him. Spock carefully places the plomeek flower in front of it. Spock extracts the stone from his pocket and places it next to the pile of stones.

“My mother, Amanda,” Spock says. “She was Jewish, so I bring stones for her grave. But as I am half Vulcan, I bring flowers of her adopted people.”

“I didn’t know,” Leonard says, their hands brushing.

“She was very beautiful,” Spock says. “Always smiling, and possessed a rarely kind heart even among humans.”

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you about the flowers.”

Spock lets his hand lightly encircle Leonard’s own, before he drops it. “My mother would be glad of you doing so.”

They stand with their hands close for many minutes. “Perhaps, she would like it better if I repaid your unwitting kindness with tea.”

Spock thinks he has misjudged the situation terribly when Leonard remains silent.

“Of course,” Leonard says, and the heavy breath in Spock’s chest releases. “If we go back the way we came, you can make it at my house, using flowers from my garden.”

He turns to face Leonard, and decides that yes, today is a day for bravery. His mother would approve of this outcome most of all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh also sleepy-mccoy DREW ART OF THE AFTERMATH OF THIS AND I WILL NEVER RECOVER, RIP IN PIECES Y'ALL
> 
> http://sleepymccoy.tumblr.com/post/162124659369/jessicamiriamdrew-based-off-of-the-linked


	2. just cause I learned how to live without you (don’t mean that I ever really wanted to)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from i miss you by gray  
> spones, 1.4k, some angst set post break up in a random au verse lmao. some implied explicit content but more gen relationship coming together and apart than anything else.

He’s been off shift for two hours by the time his phone rings. McCoy scowls at it, like it can see him, before he answers.

“This better be good,” he says. 

“It’s Spock,” Christine says. “You’re still listed as his emergency contact, and—“

McCoy narrowly avoids falling over as he pushes away his food and gets up from the table. “I’m on my way.”

_(McCoy brings him flowers for their second date. Spock smiles, says that sunflowers were his mother’s favorite, and makes McCoy wait outside the apartment while Spock puts them in water. Later, when Spock kisses him goodnight, McCoy gets a glimpse of the sunflowers arranged in a brilliant green vase. He whistles the entire way home.)_

It’s not until he’s driving, swearing at the other drivers, that he realizes he doesn’t know what’s wrong. Spock could be dead and McCoy just driving to the hospital to find that out. His turn signal is arrhythmic, making his head pound, and what he knows is a six minute drive in rush hour traffic feels like it takes several hours.

Spock has always had that effect on him.

( _He sighs against the pillow, as his breathing hitches. McCoy listens, so carefully, crooking his fingers inside Spock and making Spock’s whole body shake. “Please,” Spock says, and McCoy finally lets him fall apart.)_  

“Where is he?” McCoy asks as he rushes in through the doctor’s entrance. Christine gives him a look that’s tender and terse, and his heart continues to fall.

“He’s unconscious,” she says, “and he just got out of surgery.” She squeezes her clipboard closer to her chest.

“Christine,” he says. Spock is alive, but he doesn’t even know what happened. All he knows is that Spock never changed his emergency contact. (Leonard made his Christine. It seemed like the best option since he couldn’t make it the hospital itself.)

She gives him a look McCoy doesn’t want to parse but starts to walk towards the recovery rooms. “There was a laboratory accident,” she says. “A student added the wrong chemical.”

McCoy can hear her talking but he’s given up on any further words because Spock is hooked up to equipment, his arm and shoulder bandaged. The IV line feels like it’s depositing saline into his own heart.

 “He’ll be fine, Len,” Christine says, dropping a hand to squeeze his.

 ( _“You’re the Vulcan,” McCoy says._

_“Then you must be Bones,” Spock counters._

_McCoy grimaces; he hates that stupid nickname—but the corner of Spock’s mouth is uplifted, and he’d suffer a million worse nicknames to see that again.)_

McCoy reads over Spock’s charts for the fifth time. The surgical notes and work are top quality, but Spock is still asleep.

Not that he knows what he’ll do when Spock wakes up. He doesn’t deserve to be here keeping vigil at his ex’s bed.

“Bones,” Jim says from the doorframe. “I wanted to check on you.”

“I’m not the one unconscious,” he says, putting the charts back into their container. Jim sits down next to him, and McCoy doesn’t push away when Jim puts his arm around him.

“You didn’t do this,” Jim says. “You know that, right?” Jim is inherently warm and comforting, but McCoy deserves so little of it.

( _He stares mournfully at the ruined cake. He should’ve ordered one, not tried to bake it. McCoy had even used a box mix but that couldn’t save it from his bad baking._

_It was Spock’s birthday and Spock was going to be here soon, and—_

_McCoy squares his shoulders and frosts the damn thing anyway. It’s a little (a lot) lopsided, but the frosting helps._

_Spock, to his credit, manages not to laugh for a solid minute, and kisses McCoy while he laughs. “I love it,” he says, and McCoy knows that he does.)_

He only feels worse when Nyota arrives on the second day. She’s cool to him, nicer than he deserves, and her eyes are rimmed with red.

She was Spock’s emergency contact once. A helluva lot better one than he’s turned out to be. It’s still in the time frame where there’s no need to be concerned about Spock’s healing, but it sure feels like the end with Jim and Nyota coming by.

She asks for a moment alone with Spock and he almost refuses. The idea that anyone else should get to be alone with him, even though he doesn’t deserve it, makes his stomach seize up.

McCoy settles on going to the bathroom and getting a cup of coffee. By the time he comes back, she’s standing by the door waiting for him.

“I didn’t want to leave him alone,” she says, although it’s clear that she thinks McCoy is only barely better than that.

( _Spock picks up him from the airport after Jim is called away to work. His own skin is tan and warm from the Georgia sun and Spock’s hands are cool and soft when they brush grabbing luggage. He says a gruff thanks. Spock never asks him about the funeral or sitting shiva, just keeps up light chatter on the drive to McCoy’s apartment. It’s then, McCoy thinks, that he’s willing to take this leap, to find out how many different ways he can make Spock smile.)_

“I’m sorry,” he says to the room, to Spock, to the entire damn universe.

( _“I love you,” he says and Spock’s eyes flash. “I love you,” he says between kisses; he says it so many times that the syllables sound as nonsensical as Vulcan. Spock says it too, in Standard, in Vulcan, in languages McCoy couldn’t hope to classify.)_

“I had a ring,” he says. “Still have it, actually.” McCoy fumbles in his bag to pull out the box, the velour worn away in pieces. It’s his daily excoriation, to carry it with him. “It was my grandmother’s, you know. Never even gave it to Jocelyn.”

The steady beeping of the monitors continues, buzzing in McCoy’s mind long after each one physically fades away.

“I needed more time,” he says, turning the box over in his hands.

( _“We have been together for several years,” Spock says. “It is perfectly reasonable to make an outward sign of our lasting commitment.”_

_McCoy thinks of the ring in his locked office drawer: the one he has imagined giving Spock since their fourth date. But all he learned from marriage is loss, and he refuses to make those mistakes with Spock._

_It doesn’t occur to him, until he comes home late from the hospital weeks later, that he’d lost Spock the moment he neglected to make a defense. That the remaining days between them had merely been a countdown. There isn’t even a chemistry textbook still lingering in the shelves._

_By the time he pulls himself back together, after the deadening of his brain and heart and nerves by days of alcohol, Spock has changed his number._ )

McCoy dozes fitfully, one hand resting on Spock’s and the other curled around the jewelry box. His mind imagines universes where McCoy is crazy enough to propose on the fifth date. There’s another where Spock says his name, over and over, love seeping through each utterance.

He wakes to a room the same as before, save Spock saying  _Leonard_. He tries to pull his hand back but Spock has already curled their fingers together.

 He means to say  _I’ll go_  but what comes out is  _you left me as your contact_. Spock smiles sadly, embarrassed if McCoy is parsing correctly, and nods.

“I am sorry,” Spock says. “Despite the inappropriateness of maintaining you as my contact, I struggled to think of anyone else who could take your place.”

McCoy disentangles his hand from Spock’s, sliding his fingers across to offer a small kiss. He presses forward all the love he feels and has felt, the first time he called his grandmother to get the ring, and hopes.

 Spock sighs, running his fingers back in return, pushing back regret and sorrow and love.

“I was unfair to you,” Spock says. “You had already suffered the dissolution of a marriage.”

McCoy scoots his chair closer, enough that he can rest his forehead lightly against Spock’s own.

“I wasn’t the best either,” he says, thinking of his own cowardice. “We could always give it another go.”

Spock murmurs against him, something in Vulcan that he can only feel, not translate, but McCoy knows that it means yes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You just knocked on my door and I opened it yelling ‘I don’t want any d*mn cookies’ and you just moved in next door I’m so sorry” AU //  
> http://dailyau.tumblr.com/post/163210347869/you-just-knocked-on-my-door-and-i-opened-it
> 
> \+ some modifications, because i melded 2 plots halfway through (s/o to phalangine for that)

Leonard is going to lose his damn mind. He’s already bought his share of Girl Scout cookies for the year—online through Joanna’s troops website. Leonard has even been suckered a few times while out getting groceries. And yet they keep coming to his door. It’s that one particularly aggressive parent, because he knows the kids themselves wouldn’t be coming back to his door day after day  of him saying no. (Okay, he caved once, but in his defense, they reminded him a little bit of Joanna.)

“I don’t want any cookies,” he bites out as he opens the door. “I told you before…oh.” There are not any Girl Scouts standing in front of him. Instead, there’s a Vulcan man about his height, looking vaguely put out at being yelled at.

“My name is Spock,” the man says. “I moved in to the apartment next to yours yesterday.” He pauses, clearly rethinking the choice, if Leonard is reading the facial expressions correctly. “I believe it is customary for one to introduce themselves to their neighbors.”

“Right,” Leonard says, opening the door a bit further and relaxing his angry grip. “I thought you were a group of particularly persistent Girl Scouts, you see…”

“I confess that earth customs escape me,” Spock says. “What do desserts have to do with children, mister…?”

“Leonard,” he says automatically. “It’s a fund raiser thing, and people use their cute kids to try to get people to buy more cookies than is healthy.”

Spock’s mouth quirks upward and Leonard is charmed. Better the Girl Scouts, almost, considering that he’s opening the door all the way and inviting Spock inside.

-

They sit at his kitchen table, where Leonard has absurdly yet delicately plated out three varieties of cookies.

“Thin Mints, Samoas, and Trefoils,” he says, pointing out each on the plate. It is more than a little ridiculous to be doing so, but Spock is almost unnervingly interested. Must be a Vulcan thing.

They eat cookies and discuss the relative merits and shortcomings therein. It makes him light up in a way that he hasn’t since he met Joss.

(“Thin Mints should be green, if they are truly minty,” Spock says, and Leonard rolls his eyes heavenward.)

The snack turns into Leonard cooking dinner—he’s being hospitable, is all—and then that turns into a nightcap. By midnight, they’re polishing off the Samoas and Leonard has had enough bourbon that it’s hard to tell if in the pleasant heat in his stomach is from the alcohol or his proximity to Spock.

“I must thank you for a most delightful evening,” Spock says, eyes dark and pinning Leonard in place. Their hands brush when they stand up and Leonard has never been good at this sort of thing. He walks Spock to the door, wishing he were a bit braver to suggest that Spock stay over. (“Hey, uh, I have fully assembled furniture.” Leonard dismisses it as quickly as it comes to mind.)

Spock stands in the doorframe and Leonard has the door half open. Their apartment building is quiet, and when Spock leans in to kiss him, Leonard sighs. The subtle taste of coconut lingers in Spock’s mouth and Leonard wants to yank him back into his apartment.

“Goodnight, Spock,” he says, and waits for Spock’s half smile before he closes the door.

-

Leonard awakes too damn early the next morning to the sound of tenacious knocking on his door. He’d been having such a nice dream about Spock, too…

It could be Spock, he tells himself, pulling on last night’s jeans and a t-shirt. That’s the only thing preventing his particularly murderous mood from taking over.

As he swings the door open, he hears a small voice say: “Would you like to buy some cookies, mister Leonard?”

He looks down at the little girl, who is sedate and serious, and then lets his eyes look behind her.

“Spock,” he says.

“My daughter is trying to break a troop record,” Spock says. “Wouldn’t you like to buy some cookies?”

“Yesterday,” Leonard says, blinking. Yesterday where he spent at least thirty minutes explaining the history of the Girl Scouts as an organization and how certain bakeries are better than others.

“I was here as your new neighbor. Today I am one of those ‘damn parents’,” Spock says, but there’s mirth shining in his eyes.

Leonard sighs and reaches for the wallet in his back pocket. He hands over a twenty to the small Vulcan child. “Put me down for three boxes of Thin Mints.”

“But they aren’t green,” she says, a perfect mimic of what Spock said last night, even while she carefully puts the twenty into her order envelope. “And you have to fill out the form, silly.”

“Two boxes of Thin Mints and one of Samoas,” he amends, remembering the way Spock’s mouth tasted of them.

“Didn’t know Vulcans were into jokes,” Leonard says as he fills out the order form with his information.

Spock is slightly green when Leonard looks over at him. “Perhaps,” Spock says. “I found myself in need of a reason to continue our conversation.” And damned if that doesn’t get Leonard to flush as well.

“You have my phone number now,” Leonard says as he hands the form back. “You should use it.”

Their fingers brush, an echo of the night before, and Leonard is certain he’ll be seeing both Spock and his daughter again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phalangine came up with the bit about thin mints not being green
> 
> also thin mints are not good, sorry  
> 


	4. Manque: Having failed to become what one might have been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for karikes xoxo

He is not a father in this universe. Joanna McCoy is relegated to a different world, and Leonard can’t mourn for a child that was never his to love.

Spock is only his mother’s son in echoes of a life destroyed. He cannot expect the universe to right itself for him alone, although Leonard suspects he sometimes wishes for that to happen. Wouldn’t life be easier if Vulcan had never been destroyed?

But in a universe where worlds destroyed instead survived, Leonard doesn’t know if it would be Spock whose quarters he would return to night after night. If it would be Spock’s hands that steadily undress him to his soul and repair him in the morning.

Perhaps he would have been happy with Jim, with a relationship borne from the type of friendly bond that’s rare even across multiverses. It could be Jim that sits across from him at breakfast, and shyly bumps their toes under the table.

In a universe that is not this one or the other one they have encountered, he is without children and wakes up smiling next to Jocelyn’s blonde hair.

Here, in their third five-year mission, Spock is rarely next to him when he arises, but the smell of incense wafts through their quarters. The other universes can keep themselves in their bubbles of time, because Spock will always turn to him and say  _good morning_  and mean  _I love you_. Leonard, in turn, will touch Spock’s cheek and slide their hands together in a humanly casual gesture that has become so intimate.

**Author's Note:**

> uh also sleepy-mccoy DREW ART OF THE AFTERMATH OF THIS AND I WILL NEVER RECOVER, RIP IN PIECES Y'ALL
> 
> http://sleepymccoy.tumblr.com/post/162124659369/jessicamiriamdrew-based-off-of-the-linked


End file.
